Katarina Johnson-Thompson hits the sand during the long jump final at the Anniversary Games in the Olympic Stadium.
Photograph: ProSports/Rex/Shutterstock

The thousands in the crowd at the Anniversary Games may have been thinking about the last Olympics, but the competitors had their minds fixed firmly on the next one.

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Three weeks out from the start of the Olympic heptathlon, there were a pair of contrasting performances from Britain’s two great competitors Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Jessica Ennis-Hill. Johnson-Thompson won the long jump competition with a leap of 6.84m, her season’s best. Ennis-Hill, on the other hand, finished seventh, with 6.19m, 44cm behind the personal best she set in June.

For Johnson-Thompson it was a reassuring return to form in an event she has struggled with ever since her calamitous performance at the world championships in Beijing. Asked whether she felt the trauma – she failed to register a single legal jump – was now well behind her, she replied brightly: “Yes, I do.”

Ennis-Hill had run a brilliant 100m hurdles on Friday night to qualify third from a high-quality heat in a season’s best of 12.76sec, before finishing eighth in the final behind Kendra Harrison’s world-record time of 12.20sec. So her disappointing long jump display was, she said, a good reminder that she has more to do to get in shape to defend her Olympic title. She said: “Yesterday was such a high. It dragged me back down today. There’s still work to be done.

“It just reminds me I’m not 100% there and ready. I’ve got a couple more weeks to get everything right.” In a way she even seemed to glad about the setback. “I have to make myself nervous,” she said. “I have to have that adrenaline when I go out.”

“Had I had two great events I would probably have been sailing on a high and getting a bit carried away,” Ennis-Hill said. “It just reminds you that you’re not quite there yet. It’s stressful but it’s fine. It will be OK.” She had hoped to jump another 6.60m, as she did a few weeks ago, especially given the good weather. “It’s frustrating when you don’t jump well in conditions like this. But I hope to bring it all together in Rio, that’s when it matters.” She rightly thinks of herself as someone who performs at her best at the big championships. “I love those environments. It brings the best out of me.”

Ennis-Hill will spend the next few days training in Europe before she flies to Rio to taper down for the competition. She may be defending champion but rejects the idea that she is the favourite to win another Olympic gold. “I haven’t got the world lead and I didn’t compete in Götzis when everyone else did,” she said. “There are quite a few girls who have upped their game this year. So I don’t feel like the favourite, no.” Her competitors, she says, just give her that title because “people like to put pressure on”. One of those doing exactly that is Johnson-Thompson.

“She’s done consistent scores in all her single events,” Johnson-Thompson said of Ennis-Hill. “She’s a championship performer and defending champ.” Johnson-Thompson reckons the next in the running is Canada’s Brianne Theisen-Eaton, who finished second behind Ennis-Hill in Beijing last year, but has since won the world indoor title in Portland and has the best outdoor score in the world this year. Johnson-Thompson will be hard on their heels. Asked whether she believed she could win gold herself, she replied: “I’ve always felt that. I’ve just got to put it together.” She said: “I feel like when I’m 100% healthy I can do anything.”

Like Ennis-Hill, Johnson-Thompson doubled up at the Anniversary Games, combining the long jump with the high jump. She finished third in that, with a new outdoor personal best of 1.95m. It was not quite the perfect two days for her – “perfect would’ve been a few more centimetres in either one” – but it was “a long way better than what I’ve done this season”. She seems to be finding fine form at the right time. “I feel ready,” she said. “I just want to make sure I put everything together. I know I can do it. Those two events, yesterday and today, they’re what I always put on my scorecard. I know I can do it. It’s just about consistency.” It is, as she says, going to be “a really tough competition” to take part in, and a hell of a good one to watch for the rest of us.

There was a good win, too, for Shelayna Oskan-Clarke in the 800m, as she pipped her team-mate Lynsey Sharp in a season’s best time of 1min 59.46sec, but Dina Asher-Smith could only finish fourth in the 100m in 11.09sec. It was not so bad, she was only three‑hundredths behind the great Shelly-Ann Fraser‑Pryce who was surprisingly beaten into third by Marie-Josee Ta Lou from the Ivory Coast. No matter. Soon enough, what happened here will be a footnote. The real sport is only about to start.